In one of the more interesting announcements in the genealogy world of late, MyHeritage has announced a partnership with genetic testing company 23andMe.

Unlike the partnership between MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA which dates back to 2008 and was extended in 2012, this new partnership is not just an affiliate sales relationship.

MyHeritage has announced that they will be integrating their service directly with 23andMe, allowing one to confirm relationships in your tree on MyHeritage using the DNA data on 23andMe. Certainly a very interesting development, and it will be interesting to see how far they go with this integration.

It will also be interesting to see how the other players in this field respond to this development. MyHeritage, in addition to their namesake site also runs the large Geni.com family tree site. Will Family Tree DNA stay partnered with MyHeritage? Will they seek similar integration with MyHeritage? Will that even be allowed by 23andMe?

If not, will they seek to partner with another large family tree web site? Ancestry.com has their own family trees, but also their own DNA tests, so it would seem that’s not possible. From there, the size of family tree sites drops dramatically. TribalPages? OneGreatFamily? WikiTree? If the integration is done right, this creates a real strategic advantage for MyHeritage and 23andMe, that it would seem only Ancestry.com can really compete with at this stage.

See MyHeritage CEO Gilad Japheth speak about the new partnership on Bloomberg TV here:

and read more on MyHeritage’s blog post announcing the new partnership.